The Rake: And yet they’ve done remarkably little with it. Because ultimately the party’s view from the top down is not that there’s an opportunity here, but that their cash clientele is under siege and it’s time to circle the wagons.
Hillsman: Absolutely. The two parties are entirely the same when it comes to money. The DLC [Democratic Leadership Council] completely dominates the Democratic party now. When Wellstone says he represents the Democratic wing of the Democratic party, I’m not sure I believe him, but it’s certainly what’s needed. The DLC’s all about money and the Democrats are now accustomed to getting elected on the backs of big money. The three races I mentioned before, Corzine, Dayton, and Checchi, they’re all Democrats. In ’94 and ’96 the Democrats were out recruiting millionaires to run. They cast their lot in this direction and they’re gonna go that way. They believe it’s easier to raise money and play the game than to make any substantive changes. If anything, the closest thing we’ve seen to the kind of popular backlash that Kevin Phillips is talking about is Ventura’s election. That’s finally where everybody got tired of the money and the two parties being the same and decided to do something about it. Perot got big traction on that message in 1992, even though he spent $60 million to do it. It was a message that had good resonance. And when you consider that the others spent about $150 million each when all was said and done, $60 million to get one out of five votes in the country isn’t a bad job. There’s a lot of people who aren’t being served by the duopoly.
The Rake: But Perot and Jesse are both very distinctive personalities. They were natural lightning rods. Breaking through in the way they did really requires a larger-than-life personality, doesn’t it?
Hillsman: It does require a personality, until the playing field is leveled a lot more. I think we showed with Wellstone what you can do with a candidate who’s not necessarily a Jesse Ventura or a Ross Perot. But you can’t do it with John Marty. There’s all sorts of people you can’t do it with. I don’t know if you can do it with Tim Penny. Tim’s saving grace is that the competition just isn’t that tough this time around. It’s not like running against a Humphrey and a Coleman. It’s running against the second string. So it should be easier for him to pull it off. But until you can take some of these inequities out of the equation, you need somebody who’s more of a personality and a lightning rod.
The Rake: Is there anybody out there right now you’d like to recruit as a political candidate?
Hillsman: Nationally, I like to contrast [Russ] Feingold and Wellstone. Feingold got something done—even though it didn’t go far enough, it’s amazing that he got that campaign finance legislation through. He’s actually done something. Not just talked the talk but walked the walk. It was a lot more of a nail-biter than it was for Wellstone for him to get re-elected, but he stuck to his principles. I think in many ways he may be the Wellstone of 2004 for the Democrats. He’s sort of put feelers out to suggest he’s thinking of running for president. I like him; I read a New York Times article about him a couple of months ago and I thought I was reading about Ralph Nader. Can you do something with someone like that? Against that much money? I don’t know. The really sinister thing about the DLC is not just that they’ve made it all about money for the Democrats too. It’s what they’ve done to make the nomination even more unattainable for an unanointed candidate. They’ve pushed up the primaries, changed the party rules; the debate commissions are basically made up of Republicans and DLC Democrats. Everything’s in their favor right now. Moving up the primaries, for instance, makes it very tough for another McCain-like figure to emerge. It would be very, very tough to do anything constructive through the Democrats. McCain is the other figure on a national level who’s interesting. I do believe that if he’d run as an independent in 2000, he would have won.
As far as third-party politics are concerned, I believe the Greens and I disagree strategically. The Greens think they’re going to prosper through building from the grassroots up over the long haul. I don’t think you’ll get there that way. The Democrats have too much vested interest in knocking you out, and it’s too easy for them to block you. As a party you need to win something and you need to win something fairly big. And then you’ve got a base of power, some place to work from. What I said to the Greens was, take your best candidate and put that person in a statewide race that you can win. I think there are two offices in practically every state that Greens should have really good shots at—secretary of state and attorney general. Nader has talked about the Greens being a watchdog party; those offices are perfect places to do that. You can make such a strong case in your campaign: Don’t we really want someone who’s neutral with respect to the major parties and more closely tied to the people to be watching out for us? Plus you can win races for secretary of state without a lot of money. So I’d have run the Greens’ best candidate for secretary of state, and I’d have won. That’s the key. You’ve got to win something. The Greens get pushed into the spoiler role because in spirit they embrace it.